Guest Blog: VR Goes to Work

After hovering on the fringes of mainstream culture for years, VR was suddenly thrust into the spotlight a few years ago by developers like Oculus, HTC, Sony, and Samsung. As their rapid hardware developments piqued the interest of the entertainment world, the biggest impact was unsurprisingly felt in gaming, with console manufacturers scrambling to be the first to incorporate the tech into their products. As an unfortunate consequence, VR was mistakenly viewed by many merely as a gadget for gamers, a gimmick.

We’ve never seen it that way, and we’ve always strived to combat this misconception by demonstrating the real-world impact this incredible technology can really have. Right from our first VR projects with Pagani and Audi two years ago, we’ve had the pleasure of working within an international community of likeminded developers to apply the cutting-edge of R&D VR innovations to commercial projects with car companies around the world, and with the rate of recent hardware developments, we couldn’t be more excited about our future Virtual Reality projects!

It’s not just in our sector that VR is maturing: recently, its potential business applications have become increasingly clear. The unveiling of Oculus for Business at OC4 is testament to this, with several big-name brands partnering with the hardware firm to give a taster of what VR can really do.

From the initial staff training at companies like KFC, Walmart, and General Motors, to designing state-of-the-art passenger planes with Boeing and Airbus, VR is impacting every level of working life. Staff can now create and test new features and models, practice diffusing potentially dangerous situations, and hold complex conferences all within a virtual sphere, and they can do this from almost anywhere.

Despite these incredible innovations, though, it’s the customer who has benefited most from VR’s dramatic foray into the business world. They can use this technology to design, customise, and test an increasing number of products prior to purchase. No longer reliant on their imagination, consumers are able to see a product in a range of different surroundings, giving them unprecedented insights into potential purchases, and with the recent addition of volumetric video environments, customers can find themselves completely immersed within these life-like experiences.

The only way is up for VR in these exciting times!

If you’d like to join our team and work with us on our upcoming projects, talk to our team at the Develop:VR conference or view our current vacancies.

Chris O'Connor is Technical Director at ZeroLight and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Building World-Class Commercial VR Experiences